Jamaica

Jamaica is both the Kingsley family’s country of origin and the place to which Natasha Kingsley is compelled to return after the family’s immigration case fails. Its meaning changes with the person looking toward it: for Peter it is an imagined refuge, for Natasha at first an unfamiliar country that threatens to take her away from the life she knows, and eventually a place where she can form new attachments. The contrast between legal return and the slower work of belonging makes Jamaica central to the novel’s account of migration, family, and home.

A country left behind

Jamaica is where Samuel Kingsley and Patricia Kingsley’s family life began before their move to the United States. Samuel had already gone ahead and spent two years in America living with an old family friend of his mother. When Patricia and the children later left Jamaica, Natasha understood the departure as temporary: she said goodbye to friends and relatives expecting that she might see them again at Christmas. As a child, she worried about flying through the clouds and whether her father would recognize her after their long separation. He did recognize her and held the family close at the airport. His familiar patois reassured her, even though he smelled different to her after living in America. She was so happy to see him that she believed she could get used to anything.

The family’s migration had begun with an expectation of opportunity rather than a plan to sever ties. When Min Soo Bae fell in love with Dae Hyun Bae, she did not expect their relationship to take them from South Korea to America. Dae Hyun had been poor throughout his life, and a cousin in New York City promised help. The family’s story places this move alongside the risks of leaving one’s language, people, and history for a country whose promises may only partly come true. Jamaica, in turn, remains more than a point on a map: it is the homeland from which separation acquires its emotional force.

Different ideas of going back

Years after the move, the family’s circumstances make Jamaica a place of possible return under radically different conditions. Peter, who was born in the United States, is the only one of the family pleased by the prospect of leaving. Shy and struggling to make friends, he imagines that life in Jamaica will be a kind of paradise and that things there will somehow be better. His confidence contrasts with Natasha’s resistance. She has lived in the United States since she was eight, does not know her relatives in Jamaica well, and has no Jamaican accent. She fears losing the familiar milestones of her senior year, including prom, graduation, friends, and the possibility of college.

The practical plans Natasha has made in America sharpen that sense of loss. She has begun an application for Brooklyn College, while her mother has saved for two years to travel to Florida and obtain a stolen-number Social Security card that could help Natasha apply for financial aid. Natasha also hopes that aid and a scholarship might make SUNY Binghamton or another in-state school possible. Jamaica is therefore not simply the destination of a family journey: it stands opposite a future Natasha has been trying to build in the country she considers home.

Removal and the return

The family’s undocumented status turns that conflict into an immediate legal crisis. After Samuel’s arrest, the family receives a Notice to Appear from the Department of Homeland Security. At the first hearing, Samuel does not accept Voluntary Removal. The family researches Cancellation of Removal and hires the cheapest lawyer they can find, hoping that Peter’s United States citizenship will help establish extreme hardship to a qualifying family member. At the Merits Hearing, the judge denies the case; Samuel then accepts Voluntary Removal. Their lawyer advises against an appeal, says they have no case, and recommends leaving voluntarily rather than acquiring a deportation on their records, preserving some hope of returning one day.

Natasha still searches for another way to stay. On the day the family is due to leave, she goes to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services building in downtown Manhattan, despite not knowing what else to do or whether that agency can help. At a lawyer’s office, she fills out forms asking about criminal conduct, political affiliations, and her history in the United States. The questions force her to confront the gap between the life she has lived and the status that defines her in the proceedings. The effort to halt her departure ultimately fails: the judge will not overturn the Voluntary Removal, and Natasha leaves the United States for Jamaica.

Making a home after departure

Returning to Jamaica does not immediately restore the home Natasha remembers from childhood, because she left too young to have a settled life there and had expected the separation to be temporary. In Kingston, she enrolls in school, where her class is called Sixth Form rather than senior year. To attend university, she must study for the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Exams and her A-level exams. With money scarce, she waitresses to help support her family. She initially fakes a Jamaican accent until the performance becomes natural, and she gradually finds a family of friends. Her attachment changes over time: she first learns to like, and then to love, the country of her birth.

That growing connection does not erase what she left behind. Natasha does not let Daniel Jae Ho Bae go because she wants their relationship to end; she concludes that she cannot live in two worlds at once, with her heart in one place and her body in another. She releases him rather than be pulled apart by the distance. Jamaica consequently becomes more than the destination imposed by immigration authorities. It is the setting where Natasha begins to make a life on her own terms, even as the departure separates her from the future and relationship she had hoped to keep in America.